Sly 4: Spirit of A Thief
by AgentFade2Black
Summary: A spirit has escaped from the ruins of Kaine Island. It's up to Sly, the Cooper Gang, and a former enemy to take down this spirit.


_2:41 AM, Kaine Island, Pacific Ocean_

The ruins had lain undisturbed for several months. What remained of the great Cooper vault was irretrievable; many of the world's greatest treasures, stolen from whoever did not deserve them, were now lost forever. A slight rumbling passed underneath the island, and stopped. Another rumbling, larger than the last, shook the island. A red raccoon hand emerged from a pile of rubble, trying to dig itself out. The hand eventually gave way to a red-and-black spirit raccoon, which looked like it had been in a fight for a full twelve rounds. The spirit looked around, looking for something. It began to sprint out towards an outcropping on the water, jumping higher than most normal animals, and able to balance itself on the smallest points. It scrambled effortlessly over piles of mountain rock, and stopped just before a long plummet to the sea below. A cane, just like Sly's, materialized out of the air. Its hook made of black metal instead of gold, it complemented the spirit's general color. _I shall have my vengeance_, the spirit thought as it jumped out over the ocean and disappeared.

Mere seconds after the spirit escaped the island, cane in hand, a second spirit, blue and black, with two knives shaped very similarly to Sly's cane, approached the spot where the red spirit just was. _So he has escaped_, the blue spirit though. _We must warn them. Only the living can suppress his power_.

_3:00 PM, Paris, France_

"Isn't it a lovely day, Bentley?" asked a mouse outfitted in mechanic's overalls, covered in oil and engine sludge. Penelope was working on the engine of the Cooper Van.

"Yes, yes it is," he said, the technologically-inclined turtle sitting in his wheelchair, working on a computer simulation.

"Do you happen to know what kind of oil the van needs?"

"If my calculations are correct—"

"They always are, dear," Penelope interrupted.

"—then we need to NOT HAVE GHOSTS!" Bentley suddenly shouted.

"What's wrong?" Penelope asked, afraid that her lover and intellectual equal was in trouble once again. She had a soft spot for saving the poor guy after the incident in Blood Bath Bay with Captain LeFwee.

"My bad mojo monitor just reported a huge spike in paranormal activity surrounding Kaine Island!"

"But that's where the remnants of the Cooper Vault are!" she replied.

"Which means only one thing," Bentley continued.

"We'll have to reassemble the Cooper Gang and figure out what's going on!"

"I believe that that may be impossible," Bentley said sadly. "We lost contact with Murray after he completed his training, Sly's with Carmileta now, and the rest of them have scattered to the far corners of the world."

"I think we'll be fine. Do we know what the paranormal activity is?"

"Unfortunately, no. The data I have so far only shows that there's a LOT of it." The paranormal activity scanner's readings began spiking again, and faint voice fragments could be heard.

"Bentley, adjust your receiver three clicks left," Penelope offered. He did so, and the voice came in clearly.

"Hailing the unlikely union of turtle and mouse, hailing the unlikely union of turtle and mouse," the voice kept saying.

"Is it talking about us?" Penelope asked.

"It must be. I'll wrangle a microphone and I will see if I can communicate with it." With that, Bentley rolled off into a separate room, returning moments later with suitable microphone for the task. He plugged it in and switched it on. "This is Turtle, who are you?"

"It is good to hear from the living again."

"I'm going to ask again, who are you?"

"I am nobody important right now. What needs to happen is that you must reassemble the Cooper Gang and return to the island where you once had separated."

"That is much harder than you make it sound, O Spirit."

"You know where one is. Locating the other will not be hard, for he has heard the disturbance in his spirit realm, and has investigated it himself."

"I thank you, Spirit."

"I shall contact you again when you reach the island." The paranormal scanner returned to detecting only background levels of paranormal activity.

"So what do we do know, Bentley?" Penenlope asked, kissing him on the cheek.

"We'll have to get Sly out from Carmelita's grasp."

_11:00 PM, Paris, France_

A RC helicopter hovered over the secret residence of Interpol Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox. It started hovering right off the roof, and moved down towards the top level of the residence. It peeked into each of the windows. "Have we detected anything?" Bentley asked through his Binocu-com from his position across the street.

"Negative, Turtle," Penelope replied from her position in the safe house. Her two monitors were showing the images from a pair of thermal cameras mounted on the helicopter.

"Understood, Eagle." Bentley rolled in closer to the residence, and had his wheelchair pick up a couple rocks in anticipation.

"I've got a hit, Turtle!" Two shapes, one like a fox, and the other like a raccoon, were in the same room. "Second room from the left. Top level."

"10-4."

Inside the house, Sly simply could not sleep. Carmelita had gone to bed an hour ago, but he was having intrusive thoughts again. Memories of the raids that the Cooper Gang had gone on were beginning to come back to the forefront of his memory. From the very first job they ever pulled, stealing the cookies from the kitchen of the Happy Camper Orphanage, to flattening Mz. Ruby in the swamps of Haiti, and even the second destruction of Clockwerk, those were the best times of his life. But now he was, relatively speaking, at peace. He didn't have to run anymore; he was safe in the arms of his beloved Inspector Fox. He heard a "plink" at his window. Sly ignored it; he was too busy with his recurring thoughts to deal with small, random noises. Another "plink" at his window, and Sly realized that this noise wasn't random. He slowly got up, so as not to disturb the lady in bed, and made his way to a vent over his desk. He climbed up and into the vents, crawling slowly until he reached the rooftop. He looked down and saw the silhouette of a turtle in a wheelchair. _As I suspected_, Sly thought as he jumped down the five stories and landed softly behind him. "Bentley," he said softly, but it still nearly made the turtle jump out of his wheelchair.

"What did you do that for?" Bentley asked, stunned to see his lifelong friend before him once again.

"What better way to welcome an old friend than to act as I always do?" Sly retorted. "I can't imagine Penelope's too far away from here."

"She's in the safe house," he replied. "Listen, something major has come up and we need to bring the Cooper Gang back into business."

"Hopefully, it's something you can explain while we go."

"I will do the best I can," Bentley replied. "Do you need to say goodbye?"

"Give me a few minutes. Where's the safehouse?" Bentley whispered it in Sly's ear. "Still? Impressive."

_12:15 AM, Paris, France_

Bentley and Penelope were staring at Bentley's computer monitor. Scrawled on the display were hieroglyphics, things that generally had no business being on Bentley's monitor. Sly walked in the door and stood behind the couple. "Is this it?" Sly asked, looking at the monitor.

"No, I do not believe so. I haven't seen these before," Bentley replied. "They make as much sense as that clue written in owl was in China."

"For some reason, I can read them just fine," Sly noted, seeing the glyphs turn into letters before his very eyes.

_Sly Cooper,_

_It is excellent that we have been able to reach you, after all this time. There has been a major disturbance with regards to the Cooper ancestors. Since we are not sure that this message will reach you with haste, we are forced to leave the principle matter out of this message. Return to the old site of the Cooper Vault; our bodies and our spirits also inhabit the rubble of that island. There is much to be discussed._

_Signed,_

_Slytukhamen III_

The group stood there for a moment.

"Well, what does it say?" Bentley asked, after several uncomfortable moments.

"We're going to visit the place where we killed the good Doctor M. But we still need Murray," Sly replied.

"I suspect whoever left this message was the same spirit that contacted us earlier. If my math is correct, and my math is always correct, then Murray has felt a disturbance in the Dreamtime, and is already on his way to Kaine Island."

"Then let's go."


End file.
